Admissions advice from Kevin McMullin

Text talk is for text messages

To the chagrin of language, spelling, and grammar purists everywhere, many best practices in the art of written communication seem to be suspended when writing a text message. Rules and protocols like capitalization and punctuation slow down sending. And it’s hard for many people to justify writing 50 words if 5 are sufficient to get both your message and your meaning through. Given how many of today’s teens do the majority of their written communication over text, it’s no surprise that the truncated style of text talk seeps into other writing.

College applicants, please remember that while it might now be socially appropriate to suspend the rules of capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. when texting, that same style is not appropriate for written communication during the admissions process. When sending emails to admissions offices, college interviewers, teachers, counselors, etc., remember that what you put on the page sends a message about you, your writing, and in many cases, how seriously you’re taking both the task at hand and the process.

I’m not suggesting you need to pen a novel-like, publishable piece of work. But you likely wouldn’t talk to these people face-to-face the same way you’d talk with your friends, so don’t write to them that way, either. Pretend your message will be printed and added to your file for future review (that often happens). And save the text talk for actual texting.

Here’s a past post that includes some relevant links to help you write good email messages.